Campaigns
Campaign management allows privileged system administrators to create, distribute and monitor email campaigns. For email campaigns to be available, they must be activated in settings. Additional server configuration, including SMTP server setup, scheduled distribution tasks, etc, are required in order for campaign management to operate. Consult an experienced integrator before turning on and operating campaign management.
To send an email campaign, we must create a datasource, a campaign using the datasource, than distribute the campaign.
Datasources
About Datasources
Datasources provide the target recipients to the campaign. A datasource could be a list of email addresses you provide, or acquired from the web site. Several datasources come included with the ecommerce engine upon installation. Additional datasources require creation by an experienced integrator. Once a datasource is created, it is reusable – and each time it is used, the datasource acquires current target recipients that fit the datasource’s criteria.
Managing Datasources
Campaign datasources should only be added and modified by experienced system administrators. Please contact your website integrator to add or change any datasources.
To view and manage datasources, select "Campaign Datasources". A list of current datasources will be displayed. Select 'edit' next to any datasource to view / manage the datasource. Select 'Test' next to any datasource to view a sample of it's recipients. You can also add a new campaign datasource by selecting the 'add new campaign datasource' link.
Campaign Management
About Campaign Management
Campaign management provides the means to create and modify content that can be distributed to email recipients. To manage campaigns, select the 'Campaigns' link. A list of all current campaigns and a link to add a new campaign will be displayed.
Adding/Editing a Campaign
To add a campaign, select the "Add a New Campaign" link. To edit a campaign, select "Edit" next to the campaign you wish to manage. The campaign management form will be displayed. The campaign management form contains the following fields:
- Campaign Name: For internal reference only - this is the name that will be displayed when searching for campaigns or viewing campaign related reports.
- Datasource: the datasource controls the target recipients for the campaign. See datasources above for more information.
- From Address: The email address that will be displayed to recipients in the from field.
- Return Address: If the email bounces, this the the email address that will receive the bounce information.
- Reply To Address: If a recipient choses to reply to the email, this is the email address the reply will go to.
- Message Subject: The subject of the message as displayed in the subject field to recipients of the message.
- HTML Page: Select a page, as created in Page Management to distribute to the recipients. If this field is empty ("Select a page" is selected) than the message body below will be sent to the recipients.
- Message Body: if not HTML page is selected, the contents of this field will be sent as the body of the email to recipients. The content of this field can be plain text or HTML. If you choose to enter HTML into this field, be sure to check "HTML Format" to ensure message recipients see the email rendered as HTML.
Note that the subject and message body can use variables to display limited dynamic content. Be default, {emailAddress} is available by placing {emailAddress} (with the brackets) into the subject or the message body, the recipients email address will be displayed. Other variables available are controlled by the datasource. Check the datasource information or ask your integrator about what what variables are available, or to make additional variables available.
After you are completed entering / changing the content of the campaign form, select the 'post changed' button at the bottom of the form to commit the changes to the database.
Preview the message
To preview what the message will look like to the recipients, select the 'preview' link next to the campaign in the campaign listing.
Send a test message
To send a test message, click 'send a test' link next to the campaign in the campaign listing. Enter your email address into the form and click the 'send' button. You should receive the email shortly.
Campaign Distribution
To distribute a campaign, select the 'send to *datasource*' link (where datasource is the name of your selected datasource for this campaign) in the campaign listing. You will be asked to confirm that you want to distribute this campaign.
The size of the campaign recipient list will effect how long the system will take to distribute to all the recipeints in the campaign. You can view the progress of the campaign distribution via the campaign report.
Campaign Reporting
Campaign reporting allows you to monitor the progress of a campaign distribution and it's activity up to and including resulting visits back to the web site originating from the campaign. Additional reporting information on the campaign (including purchase activity) can be found using the Cart Report.
To view a campaign report, select "View Report" next to the campaign in the campaign listing. For each individual send of the campaign, the resulting report will provide the following:
- Emails Queued: The number of emails waiting in the system the be sent out. This will build gradually once a campaign has been distributed.
- Emails Sent: The number of emails sent out to recipients.
- Emails Viewed: The number of emails opened by recipients (note this only works with HTML formatted emails).
- Click Thrus: Number of recipients who clicked through from the email to the website.
